


Blueberry Syrup

by DKNC



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Family, Jon is not Ned's kid, Modern AU, No Incest, but it's still complicated, or his nephew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 11:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6468172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DKNC/pseuds/DKNC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a birthday gift for Alice of Alonso (AliceinNeverNeverLand) which started out as a tumblr ficlet, but grew. It is also the first time I've ever written one of these pairings, but they're her fave so, here you go!</p><p>Modern AU in which a rather new romance leads to a lot of soul searching within the Stark family and, for the sake of someone they both love, two people take a chance on honesty in a relationship that's long been complicated, painful, and fraught with incomplete understanding on both sides. But is it too late for them to hear each other?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blueberry Syrup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AliceInNeverNeverLand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceInNeverNeverLand/gifts).



**SANSA**

“You were right. My mother doesn’t like the fact that we’re dating.”

Jon had been lying on his back on the blanket, looking up at the sky, but he rolled on his side to face her a those words. “Your mother doesn’t like me period,” he said, reaching out to tug at a strand of her hair that was blowing in the light breeze.

“That isn’t true,” Sansa protested. “You’ve been Robb’s best friend forever, and Mom’s always admitted you’re a better influence on him than Theon is.” She sighed. “She just never liked your mother. And you have to admit she had reason.”

“Mmm,” said Jon noncommittally. It drove her crazy when he wouldn’t actually speak, which happened more often than she’d like. He reminded her a bit of her father in that. Both of them always seemed to have more on their minds than what they actually said. Her mother laughed about her father’s taciturn ways, sometimes joking that they’d been married a year before she got a full sentence out of him. If her boyfriend had been anyone else, Sansa would likely have gone to her mother already for advice on dealing with a man who keeps too much of what he thinks and feels to himself, but she wasn’t about to say anything even remotely negative about Jon to her mother.

She sat up on the blanket and punched his arm. “Don’t ‘mmm’ me, Snow. Talk to me.”

Jon made a pained face, but sat up as well. “It is really pretty here,” he said, looking out at the river.

That was completely off-topic, but she decided to let it pass. “It is,” she agreed. “I can’t believe you’ve never been here before. I figured you had to have come with Robb at some point over the years.”

“Nope. Robb’s a mama’s boy. He’d never ask her to bring me here.”

“Robb is not a mama’s boy!”

Jon raised a brow and stared at her until she laughed. “Okay, maybe a little bit. But for your information, my mother was absolutely fine with your coming to Riverrun with us this weekend. Well . . . at least no less fine than she was with our dating in the first place. And if she allowed you to come along as my boyfriend, she certainly would have let you come along as Robb’s friend. So if you never came with Robb, that’s just the two of you being stupid about it!”

Jon shrugged, and looked back toward the river. The house was full of people--all seven Starks, Robb’s girlfriend, Bran’s friend, Sansa’s grandfather, Great Uncle Brynden, Uncle Edmure and his current girlfriend, and Aunt Lysa with Cousin Robert. She and Jon had brought a blanket out to sit on the river bank after lunch to get some time alone--something that was impossible to achieve in the house. And now he was being all moody because she’d mentioned her mother. Her mother who had gone out of her way to make sure they had the stupid blueberry syrup for their waffles this morning because Jon liked it when everybody else ate them with maple syrup!

“You have got to stop this!” she said, beginning to get angry with him.

“Stop what?”

“Resenting my mother! Giving me the silent treatment whenever I talk about the problem you have with her! Never actually . . .”

“The problem she has with me,” Jon interrupted. He didn’t shout. His voice wasn’t even as loud as Sansa’s had been, but she could hear the hint of anger in his as well. “Catelyn Stark has a problem with me, Sansa. Not the other way around.”

“Maybe she does have a problem with you, Jon. But if you think it doesn’t go both ways, you’re crazy! You can’t stand her!”

“I can’t stand that she’s such a hypocrite. Asking me if I wanted blueberry syrup this morning with that smile on her face, when I know she wishes I were anywhere but here and would turn cartwheels if you dumped me!”

Sansa closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. “Did it ever occur to you,” she said finally, “that she is trying? You’re right. She’d probably be thrilled if we just broke up and she didn’t have to try, but she is trying. Because she loves me. And you’re supposed to love me, too, but are you trying at all?”

Jon actually looked contrite. “I do love you, Sans,” he said. “You believe that, don’t you?”

She couldn’t stay mad at him with that expression on his face. “Of course, I do. And I love you, Jon. Nothing’s going to change that. Not my mother. Not anything else. But you’ve got to stop thinking the worst of her all the time. She bought the damn syrup especially for you. She’s been doing that since we were little, you know. Or had you honestly never noticed that no one who actually lives at our house eats it?”

Jon shrugged. “I figured your dad asked for it.”

Sansa laughed. “My dad? Jon, he’s always liked you, and I know he’s stood up for you when Mom was less than welcoming, but he’s never asked for anything from the grocery store for himself or any of us in his life! He probably doesn’t even know that you’re the only one who eats the blueberry!” She shook her head and laughed again. “My dad’s a great guy. But he isn’t all that observant about stuff like that.”

“But why would your mother care?”

Sansa sighed. “Because she’s a nice person, Jon. And you were a kid. And no, she didn’t like the fact that Dad’s ex-girlfriend who had cheated on Dad with his brother who happened to be engaged to her at the time moved back to town when I was three years old with a six year old boy that everybody said looked like a Stark! But she knew none of that was your fault even if she didn’t like having you around. Maybe the blueberry syrup was her way to make up for resenting you for being there.”

“I thought you said she didn’t resent me.”

“No. I said she didn’t dislike you. And that you resent her, too.”

“And I don’t look like a damn Stark. I have brown hair and grey eyes. So my mom had a type. Not my fault if she liked to fuck similar-looking men. People are idiots. And my mother was an idiot for ever going back to that stupid town.”

“People are idiots, Jon,” Sansa said softly, although she didn’t comment specifically on his mother. Privately, she thought Jon’s mother had been selfish, reckless, and careless of the people in her life, including Jon, but she wouldn’t say that now. The woman had died three years ago when Jon was seventeen. Her father had helped Jon become legally emancipated so that he wouldn’t have to go into the foster care system until his eighteenth birthday. He had no other family. He’d never even been told who his father was and swore he had no desire to find out. It definitely wasn’t a Stark, though, as Brandon Stark had been dead before he was ever conceived, and her dad had been living in England with her mother for a year, wishing to start their own marriage far away from the troubles they’d been through. Robb had been born there. Of course, actual facts hadn’t kept some of the nastier tongues from wagging about Jon’s origins, especially when he’d started spending almost all his time at the Starks’ house. Sansa hadn’t understood it when she was little, but she’d been mortified by it when she was in middle school—to the point that she’d even stopped talking to Jon in public for a while lest anyone think she believed he was her brother.

“Now who’s not talking?”

She hadn’t realized how long she’d been lost in thought until Jon asked the question. “Sorry,” she said. “Look,” she said, taking his hand. “I know things were never easy for you growing up. And I never really even knew your mom. Our mother didn’t want any of us around her, and she never came to our house.”

“She wasn’t welcome in your house,” Jon said somewhat bitterly. “Your mother never could forgive her for stuff that happened a million years ago! Or for bringing her bastard back to town to embarrass Eddard Stark.”

“Mom knows perfectly well you aren’t Dad’s kid, Jon!” Sansa said in exasperation. “She’d have locked me up before agreeing to let us date if she thought there was even the slightest chance of it! But it was bad enough for her that Dad would go over there to your house sometimes. She knew he was only looking after you—making sure that you got home safe, that your mom was . . . okay.” 

“Sober. He was making sure Mom was sober. And that she’d remembered to buy food. You can say it, Sansa. We all know my mom was an addict. But she did the best she could. She really did try.”

He looked so sad that Sansa couldn’t help but put her arms around him. “I know,” she said softly. “Dad told me once that he thought your mother really loved my uncle—more than she’d ever loved him. And something broke inside her when he died. She disappeared after that, and he doesn’t know where she went or anything that happened with her until she showed back up with you. She never would tell him anything. If she’d only told people who your father was, I think . . .”

“You think your mother might have had an easier time of it,” he spat out, pulling away from her embrace. “Maybe she would have. I don’t know, and I don’t really care. I wasn’t honestly worried too much about your mother’s bruised ego back then because I was too busy worrying about whether I’d come home to find mine strung out again or dead.”

Sansa knew there was no comparing the lives of their mothers so she didn’t even try. But she also knew that the whole situation with Jon and his mother had caused her mother more than a ‘bruised ego.’ She’d suffered in silence all the pitying glances and whispered comments along with the anonymous phone calls asking if she knew where her husband was any time Dad was at Jon’s house trying to help him sober his mother up. She’d refused to dignify any of the ridiculous questions about Dad with answers, instead giving anyone rude enough to ask a glare that could freeze a person where they stood. Then at home, she would go into her room and cry. Sometimes, she and Dad would argue about the time Dad spent with Jon outside their house. Sometimes when they argued, Mom would demand that Jon not come over so often. But she never really tried to stop Dad from helping him. And she never turned him away when he showed up at their door—with Robb or on his own. And she never stopped buying the stupid blueberry syrup. But Jon couldn’t give her credit for that.

“She wouldn’t want you dating me anyway, Sansa,” he said after another long moment of silence. “I’m somebody’s bastard, after all. Definitely not good enough for her little girl.”

“Well,” Sansa said fairly. “That is part of it. The not knowing who your father is, I mean. It worries her. But she’s getting better on that score. I guess that’s one thing I should thank Joffrey for.” She smiled at the scowl that appeared on Jon’s face at the mention of her ex-boyfriend. He and Robb had been the ones who actually saw Joffrey hitting her one night. They beat the shit out of him and dragged her to her parents insisting that she tell them exactly what had happened and how long it had been going on. She’d been furious with them at the time, but they’d been right. They’d saved her. And Joffrey, born of a marriage between two of the most prominent families in existence, was revealed to be a sadistic little shit. That had gone a long way toward curing her mother of her tendency to judge people on their last names. “And it all goes back to the way she was raised, Jon. You heard Grandpa last night at dinner when Uncle Edmure was talking about the trouble one of Old Man Frey’s boys got into. ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ he said. With Roslin sitting right there by Uncle Ed!” She shook her head at the memory. “I’ve heard my grandfather say that at least a million times and I’ve never lived in the same house with him. Think how often my mother must have heard it growing up!”

“Mmm,” Jon said.

Sansa sighed. At least he wasn’t actively denying that her mother wasn’t nearly as narrow-minded when it came to judging people as her grandfather was. “Anyway, when I started this conversation about Mom not liking that we’re dating, I was actually starting to tell you something else before you sidetracked us with the ‘Your mother just hates me and always will’ stuff.”

“I never said she hated me. I said she doesn’t like me, and I stand by that statement.”

Sansa rolled her eyes. “Whatever. But this may surprise you then. Last night, after you and Robb had gone to your room, Mom came to mine and Arya’s.”

“To make sure you hadn’t sneaked off to fornicate with me, no doubt.”

“Jon!” Sansa said, punching his arm again. If she punched him many more times during this conversation, he’d think she was Arya. He’d already commented on how they’d been placed in rooms on opposite ends of her grandfather’s very large house and seemed intent on taking it personally even when she’d pointed out that he was sharing a room with Robb, and that Jeyne and Uncle Edmure’s girlfriend Roslin were in the room across the hall from her and Arya so that all unmarried couples were dutifully separated for propriety’s sake. “They’re my parents! They don’t want me to have sex with ANYBODY until I’m thirty!”

“Guess they’re out of luck then.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Should we let them know that ship has sailed?”

“Only if you want to be murdered. And by my father much more so than my mother,” she smirked. “Anyway, Mom came to tell us good night, and Arya flat out asked her why she let you come this weekend since we all know she doesn’t like you.”

“Told you she doesn’t like . . .”

“Shut up,” Sansa said, shutting him down. “Arya agrees with everything you say. Tell her the sun revolves around the earth and you’ll have her arguing with her science teacher! But I thought you might like to hear Mom’s answer.”

He shrugged. “You obviously think I should.”

Ugh. Talking to Jon about Mother was possibly even harder than talking to Mother about Jon, and Sansa prayed that the two of them could just get over themselves and the past because she had no intention of letting Jon go or of pulling away from her mother who, as clichéd as it may be, truly was her best friend. “She sat down on Arya’s bed and said, ‘I don’t particularly like Jon and Sansa dating right now, Arya, and I have a number of reasons for that which are quite frankly none of your business.’” Jon snorted, and Sansa gave him a look that silenced him. “She then said, ‘That does not mean I dislike Jon at all. He’s never done anything to warrant my disliking him as far as I know, and my concerns have nothing to do with him personally. As for why I allowed Sansa to invite him along for the weekend, we’ve always allowed you children to bring friends to Riverrun—even girlfriends and boyfriends, and your sister is eighteen now. She can choose whom she dates regardless of what your father and I say about it. And whatever my reservations, at least Jon’s a damn sight better choice than Joffrey Baratheon ever was.’ Then she stood up, kissed us both, and said, ‘Goodnight, girls’ and walked out, leaving Arya sitting there with her mouth hanging open in shock. You can ask her, if you want.”

Jon was surprised. She could see it in his face. She’d known Jon for as long as she could remember, and they’d actually been dating since she was seventeen and a half, although they’d only admitted it to her parents, and then to everyone else, since her eighteenth birthday three months ago. She’d learned to read his expressions somewhat as a child—just as she had with her siblings. And since they’d started falling in love, she’d actually studied his face—looking for ways to figure out the words he didn’t say. Her father always accused her mother of being able to read his mind, and sometimes it honestly seemed that she could (And that she could read all of theirs as well!). When Sansa had been about ten, she’d asked her mother if she really could read minds, and Mom had laughed. ‘No, my darling,’ she had said. ‘I can’t read minds, but your faces say an awful lot to someone who knows and loves those faces as well as I do. Even your father’s, when he’s being his most stubborn and silent. Just don’t tell him my secret, all right?’ 

She’d remembered her mother’s words and discovered she was right. The more she came to love Jon, the more she could see in his face and hear in his silences. He was surprised by what she’d just told him. And pleased. Not that he’d say that. 

“Well, nice to know I at least manage to rank above a violent, perverted, sack of shit in the eyes of Mrs. Catelyn Stark,” Jon said evenly, and Sansa laughed. That was about as much affirmation of her mother she could expect from him for now. She’d just keep hoping for baby steps forward.

“You do, indeed. Now, we can continue to talk about my mother or we could think of something else to do on this blanket which is much too far from the house to be seen by anyone and too far off the path to be discovered accidentally.”

Jon grinned at her, and as he laid her back down onto the blanket, it didn’t bother her one bit that he didn’t respond to her in words. 

**EDDARD**

“They’ve been out there a long time,” Ned Stark said, walking out onto the balcony that overlooked the river, and leaning down to plant a kiss on the top of his wife’s head as she sat reading a book in the late afternoon sun.

“Who?” she asked absently, “And out where?”

“Sansa and Jon,” he said. “They went out for a walk at least two hours ago. I thought they’d be back by now.”

She turned around to face him. “Are Robb and Jeyne still out on the boat?”

“Yes, I think so,” he responded.

“They’ve been gone since well before lunch,” she said with a smile. “You aren’t worried that they aren’t back?”

“I . . .” he smiled at her. “I’m being sexist. Is that what you’re getting at?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling more widely. “What applies to your daughter should apply to your son, my love.” She twisted her mouth into a wry expression. “Personally, I’d like all of them to stay right where I can see them at all times, but Robb is nearly twenty-one and Sansa is eighteen, so I just read my book and pretend I don’t remember what I used to do out on the boat or on long walks when I was their age.”

“Do I want to know what you were doing at their age?”

“No,” she said, smiling up at him. “Suffice it to say that I never enjoyed any of it as much as I have enjoyed what I’ve done in boats and on walks and any number of other places since I was twenty-three.”

He laughed and bent down to kiss her properly. She’d been twenty-three when the two of them went from being friends supporting each other through crises to being lovers. Looking back, he thought the attraction, the connection, had likely been there long before, but in the wake of Brandon’s and Ashara’s betrayals and then Brandon’s and Father’s terrible deaths, they’d both tried to deny it for quite a while.

She returned his kiss readily enough, but he sensed a bit of distance in her, as if her mind were not entirely with him. Releasing her from his embrace, he stood to pull a chair over right beside hers. “What is it, Cat?” he asked her as he sat beside her. “Something’s troubling you, I can tell.”

She closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose. “I’m still not certain we’re doing the right thing, Eddard.”

“Eddard, is it? You are being serious. Which of our actions are you not certain about? Because if it’s about us getting married, I’m not letting you out of that deal now.”

She smiled wanly, but she didn’t laugh. He had a pretty good idea what troubled her, but it would be best to let her say it.

“It’s Sansa,” she said. “It’s just over a year since she ended things with Joffrey, and she’s already so . . .involved . . . with Jon Snow. It seems to me she’s rushing things, and maybe we’re making a mistake by not trying harder to slow this down.”

Ned sighed. Catelyn’s feelings about Jon were nothing if not complicated, and he bore a large part of the responsibility there. When his ex-lover (Brandon’s former lover as well) had breezed back into town with a fatherless child and a crippling drug addiction she couldn’t seem to beat, he’d felt compelled to help them out. Initially, he’d not given any thought to what people might think, but even when he’d heard the talk, he’d paid it no mind. He and his wife both knew there was no truth to it, and words were wind. Yet, wind can damage, and over the years some pretty brutal winds had been blown toward his wife. 

It didn’t help that Ashara had steadfastly refused ever to apologize to either of them for what she and Brandon had done all those years ago. They were in love, she had said, and love cannot be wrong. For Ned, that particular wound had long since healed. He honestly believed he could never love any woman the way he loved Catelyn, and if Brandon’s and Ashara’s reckless behavior in the name of love had allowed him to discover that, then he was more grateful than hurt or angry about it at this point. It used to bother him that Catelyn remained so angry at Ashara. It caused him to wonder if she truly did wish Brandon were her husband rather than him, but she’d put those fears to rest long ago by loving him wholeheartedly, and sometimes even more than he felt he deserved. No, his ever dutiful wife had been raised to believe in being faithful and keeping your word. Had Brandon come to her and broken their engagement, she might have forgiven the two of them more easily. But he never did that. He simply carried on with Ashara for months before the two of them were caught. Had Ashara never come back to town or had she at least named Jon’s father rather than finding amusement in the number of people who believed it to be him, Cat might have forgiven more easily. But as it was, she’d held onto all her grievances, and when Ned encouraged Jon’s friendship with Robb and almost forcefully inserted Jon into their lives for the sake of a woman who’d once been very dear to him and then the sake of a child he’d come to love dearly, he’d given her cause to resent Ashara and her son even more as the rumors increased over the years.

“Is this truly about Sansa?” he asked her cautiously, “Or is it about Jon?”

“Well, it’s about both of them, of course! It isn’t like either of them could date the other without the participation of both!” she snapped.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“I do know what you mean. And we’ve been through this countless times before. I think he’s wrong for her. We don’t know who his father is, and I admit I’m terrified that he’ll turn out like his mother. I’d never want Sansa to be hurt the way you were. And there is a genetic predisposition to addictions. That’s science, Ned—not prejudice on my part. They dated for nearly six months without telling us about it which hardly inspires me to trust them. Jon and Robb ‘rescued’ her from Joffrey so she sees them as her heroes, but Robb, of course, is her brother which leaves Jon as her knight in shining armor. It’s a very intoxicating thing to fall for your hero and have him fall for you. And she was abused, my love.” She said this last very softly, laying her hand over his for she knew how he blamed himself for not realizing sooner what kind of boy Robert’s son really was. “She’s always wanted to love and be loved, Ned. After living through a nightmare such as that, a girl will either not trust any man again for a very long time or fall into the arms of the first man who seems to be the opposite of her abuser.”

“So you admit Jon is nothing like Joffrey?”

“I have never claimed that Jon Snow is a bad person in any way, Ned, and you know that very well! My god, I spent most of Robb’s high school years attempting to get him to spend more time with Jon and less with the Greyjoy boy!”

Ned smiled at her because that statement was true enough. Jon might have had no family to speak of other than a drug addicted mother, but Theon came from a family chock full of people whose character would never pass muster with Catelyn. To be fair, he didn’t want any of the elder Greyjoys around his son, either, and most of the trouble Robb had ever been in had involved Theon, but the kid had honestly cared about Robb. Even Catelyn had been willing to admit it until Robb got the one and only suspension of his high school career because Theon had thought it would be fun to spike the punch at the homecoming dance, and he put all the alcohol bottles in Robb’s car where they were subsequently discovered. To his credit, Theon had taken the blame, but Robb still got suspended with him and missed playing in his final football game on senior night. That was three years ago, and Catelyn still got worked up when it was mentioned.

“I think you should give Sansa more credit, my love. As you’ve said yourself, Jon is a good boy.”

“Man, Ned,” Catelyn said, pulling her hand back and sitting up straighter. “Jon is a man. He’s nearly twenty-one, and Sansa, while legally an adult, is much younger. And emotionally, well . . . he’s been entirely on his own since before he was eighteen, and Sansa still comes to me when her blouse needs ironed! You can’t ignore the difference in their maturity level.”

“No, I can’t,” Ned sighed. “And I’ve told Jon that very same thing.” The worry still in Catelyn’s blue eyes told him that his wife’s worries about this relationship were likely as strong as ever in spite of her offering Sansa the olive branch of this weekend at Riverrun. “As for their not coming to us when their relationship first turned romantic, they were flat-out wrong. You know perfectly well it was Sansa’s idea, fearing that we’d simply forbid them from seeing each other. And we likely would have. But that doesn’t matter. Jon, as an adult, should have known better than to sneak around like a guilty child for so long, regardless of what Sansa wished.”

“Exactly!” Catelyn said emphatically.

“I do sympathize with him, Cat. Our daughter is very like you in some ways, you know. And I find it very difficult to deny you anything when you look at me the way that you do sometimes.”

“Except when you think I’m wrong,” she said, suddenly looking down and speaking more quietly. “And you’ve always thought me wrong when it comes to Jon. Wrong and unfair and unkind. And I know you think I’m being all those things now.” She looked up at him then. “Can you listen to my concerns, Ned? Can you really think about them? Even though, when it comes to Jon Snow, I know you believe me to be a terrible person?”

There was a question in those blue eyes, an uncertainty he normally didn’t see there. Did she truly believe he thought that about her? Did she think it of herself? He now reached out to take her both her hands in his. “You are not a terrible person, and I could never think so. You are . . . you are . . . everything,” he finished rather lamely, unable to find the words to express to her how wonderful she truly was, how much she meant to him and their children and how unbelievably proud and blessed he felt to have her in his life at all—much less as his wife for over two decades now.

She smiled hesitantly. “Well, ‘everything’ encompasses quite a lot, Ned. Good and terrible. I know you wish I had welcomed Jon into our lives the way you did, and I know you think I’m wrong about this thing between him and Sansa now.”

He looked at her a moment, not wanting to hurt her—god, he never wanted to hurt her, although he sometimes managed to do so in spite of that. “I think you love our children,” he said carefully. “And you would lay down your life to protect them. And sometimes . . . you protect them even beyond what is needed, although I’ve been guilty of that as well.”

“So you think I’m being overprotective in this,” she said, a slight edge to her voice.

“No,” he said quickly. “That is not what I’m saying. In fact, I share some of your concerns. Sansa has been hurt badly, and she is not ‘over that’ by any means, whatever she may believe. And she does see Jon as her hero to a certain extent. Being human, he’ll disappoint her. God knows I’ve disappointed you at times. I don’t know if what she feels for him can survive that. Only time will tell, I’m afraid. But Jon . . . I’ve watched him with her. You’re right when you say he is older than his years. He loves her. If this is a passing fancy on Sansa’s part, it will hurt him badly.”

“You’re more concerned about Jon Snow than our daughter?” she asked him incredulously.

“No!” he said even more quickly than before. He wasn’t explaining this well at all. “I am simply agreeing with you that the two of them, however much they feel for each other are in two different places in their lives. And that could end up hurting them both. Jon must be willing to let her be eighteen, to grow on her own rather than just grow dependent on him. If he cannot do that, they won’t last—not in any healthy way for Sansa. And if I see her becoming too dependent upon him, I will ask him to walk away.”

“Do you think he would? If he loves her?”

“If he truly loves her, yes.”

“And you think he does. Truly love her, I mean.”

“I do.”

She turned to look out toward the river again, thinking.

“As to your other concerns, Jon is already quite a bit like his mother in some ways,” Ned said softly. Catelyn’s head snapped around quickly to look at him then. Of course, she could not imagine any way in which being like Ashara might be a good thing. “You never really knew her well, my love,” Ned said gently. “And there is no reason you should want to. But she was smart. She always looked beneath the surface of things. And she was resilient. And very brave about living life on her terms.”

“On her terms, indeed,” Catelyn snorted.

“I didn’t say I approved of all her choices, Cat. But when she made them, she lived with them, and made no excuses.”

“She wouldn’t have lived at all—not after she came back, were it not for your constantly rescuing her.”

“She was a different person when she came back, Cat,” Ned said softly. “She lost herself somewhere. I think it started when Brandon died. She truly did love him, however wrong it was of both of them to simply take what they wanted without regard to either of us. I don’t know what happened to her after she left. I don’t know who Jon’s father is or what kind of relationship they had. I’ve told you that before.”

“I believe you,” she said. “I’ve never doubted your truthfulness, Ned. Sometimes your judgment, where that woman was concerned, but never your truthfulness—or your motives.”

“Anyway, what I’m saying is that while you are not wrong to hold Ashara accountable for her actions after she returned, the person we knew all those years bore little resemblance to the woman I once knew. And Jon bears no resemblance to that poor lost soul at all.”

“But what if someday he does?” Catelyn almost whispered the question. “I worry about Lysa, Ned. She drinks far more than she used to since her husband’s death. And Robert Baratheon—my god, you know what drink has done to him and Cersei both! I can’t stand the thought that Sansa might one day watch someone she cares for . . . someone she loves . . .” Catelyn shook her head, unable to finish the sentence.

“No one knows the future, Catelyn. For anyone. But I can honestly say that whatever genetics may do to predispose a person to such things, I believe Jon saw enough horrors with his mother over the years to never touch the stuff. He doesn’t even drink alcohol, you know.”

“He isn’t twenty-one yet,” Catelyn said.

Ned simply raised a brow, and she actually laughed. “All right. So that underage business never stopped you or me, and it certainly hasn’t stopped Robb or even Sansa. I just . . . I worry, Ned.”

“I know you do,” he said. “I worry, too. How could we not after what she’s been through? Watching her fall in love again after Joffrey is terrifying. Where you and I differ, my love, is that I worry less because it’s Jon and you worry more.”

“He thinks I hate him, you know.”

“He doesn’t think that.” Ned knew he didn’t sound convincing. Jon didn’t think Catelyn liked him. To be fair, her feelings about his mother had bled over into her attitude toward him over the years enough that a young boy could hardly believe anything else. And as he’d reached his teenaged years, he’d made it fairly plain that he didn’t particularly like her—which hadn’t helped matters much. Neither of them had been openly hostile to the other. That wasn’t in either of their natures, but silence can speak volumes, and there had been a lot of silence between the two of them, and Ned prayed they could somehow reach past that silence for the sake of the girl they both loved.

“You’re a terrible liar, Eddard Stark,” Catelyn said with a laugh. “You always have been.” She sighed loudly and looked back toward the river. “I’m worried about her. I wish she weren’t involved with anyone right now. I’d like her to spend more time just on her own, figuring out who and what she wants to be. But I fell in love with Brandon at eighteen. No one could have kept me away from him.” She looked back at Ned and smiled sadly. “And I survived that.”

“You did, indeed, my love.”

“And whatever else I feel about all that happened between Brandon Stark and myself, I shall forever be grateful to the man for introducing me to the love of my life,” she said, smiling more widely. She stood up and pulled him up with her. “I love you, Ned. I love everything about you. I even love the way you wouldn’t let that poor child be neglected when I know I didn’t make it easy for you. If Jon Snow is truly a good enough man for our daughter, it will be because of you.”

Her words left him temporarily speechless, so he did the only thing he could think of and pulled her into his arms for a kiss. When they broke apart, he grinned. “Well, I honestly don’t think there’s a man alive who’s good enough for either of our daughters, but I’m hoping they each find one who’s somewhat acceptable.”

She laughed, the light musical laugh that he hadn’t heard from her until now during this entire conversation. “Well,” she said. “I suppose, if Sansa’s heart is currently set on young Mr. Snow and you are willing to bless him with the designation of ‘somewhat acceptable,’ I should go downstairs and attempt to convince him that I don’t actually hate him.”

“Downstairs? But he and Sansa are . . .”

She laughed again and tossed her head in the direction of the river. Ned turned to look and saw Sansa and Jon walking up from the river bank hand in hand. Apparently they’d been somewhere past the tree line downstream. “What’s Jon carrying?” he asked, squinting as the sun was in his eyes.

Catelyn bit her lip. “A blanket,” she said.

“Maybe I need to go downstairs and talk to him before you do,” Ned said.

“Stop growling, Ned,” his wife told him. “It won’t help.”

“All right, but maybe I’ll ask your father if he needs his shotguns cleaned tonight. Jon can sit out on the porch with me while I do that.”

She laughed at him. “You’re awful, you know. You sound so enlightened until you see one of our girls holding a boy’s hand.”

“I know what holding your hand does to me,” he said, giving her a rather lecherous look. “I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with any man having those thoughts about our little girls however old they get!”

“Well, why don’t you just hold onto those thoughts for later, all right? Because if a father’s concern about such things knows no age limits, and you look at me like that in front of my father, maybe he’ll clean his own shotguns tonight and make you watch!” She turned to leave the balcony, giving an exaggerated swing of her hips as she went for his benefit. He appreciated it.

“Ned,” she said, turning back suddenly, “You don’t really believe I hate Jon, do you?”

He smiled at his beautiful, stubborn, sometimes unforgiving, sometimes selfless, sometimes infuriating, but always wonderful wife. “Of course, I know you don’t hate Jon. You brought that godawful blueberry slop he likes to pour all over perfectly good waffles all the way from Winterfell, didn’t you?”

**JON**

“I had a lovely afternoon, Mr. Snow,” Sansa teased as the two of them climbed the steps to the big front porch of Riverrun. No one was sitting outside in any of the many chairs—not even in the big porch swing. Jon had laughed out loud when he’d seen the swing. He thought such things existed only in movies about the south or country songs, but he’d discovered it was actually quite nice to sit and swing when he and Sansa had commandeered it from Rickon and Arya last evening. He’d seen people on the balcony up above as they’d walked up from the river, and he was pretty certain one of them had been Sansa’s mother as she had the same unmistakable hair that her daughter did. In fact, it sometimes disconcerted him that from behind, he could so easily mistake a woman he had few positive thoughts about for the one he loved more than he’d ever loved anyone or anything. But whoever had been up there was gone now.

“I rather enjoyed it myself, Ms. Stark,” he replied, tipping an imaginary hat and adopting an exaggerated southern accent.

Sansa dissolved into giggles. “Oh god! That was terrible, Jon! Don’t let anyone in Mother’s family here you talk like that. First of all, this isn’t Georgia or Alabama, and secondly, even people in the deepest backwoods in those states don’t sound like that!”

“I’ll be good,” he promised. “Wouldn’t want to give your mother any new ammunition to dislike me just when I’ve passed Joffrey the cunt in rankings.”

Sansa’s smile disappeared. “Why do you have to do that? I laugh and tease you about a godawful accent that you put on to be funny, and you make it into a dig at my mother.”

“I didn’t make a dig at your . . .”

“Yes, you did. And if you honestly don’t recognize that, then seeing the worst in my mother has become so reflexive for you that you do it unconsciously. And I want you to stop it.”

“I . . .” Jon swallowed. The woman had hated him since he was a kid. For the crime of being his mother’s child. For the crime of being suspected of being Eddard Stark’s child—which she knew damn well he wasn’t. Why the hell shouldn’t he think badly of her?

“Why exactly do you think she hates you?” Sansa said suddenly. “Tell me.”

“Geez, Sansa, I thought we were finished with this conversation.”

“So did I. But apparently, I was wrong. Mom didn’t like that people thought you were Dad’s. She was never particularly thrilled that you hung around our house so much because it made people believe that garbage even more. She honestly did hate your mother. I’ll grant you those. But what specifically mean thing did she do to you that convinced you that she hates you—you, Jon Snow—as a human being. I’d like to know.”

“I . . .” He swallowed. She’d never hugged him. Not once. His mom was never a big hugger, so he hadn’t realized it was a thing, but he’d watched Catelyn Stark hug her children repeatedly through the years, and it had made him sad and then angry that she never hugged him. That sounded stupid, though. He couldn’t say that to Sansa. She’d say that only proved her mother didn’t love him like she did her own kids. And that wasn’t really a crime.

“I’m waiting.”

“It . . . it isn’t anything specific, really, Sansa. It’s just years and years of seeing how her face looked when she looked at me. She didn’t want me around. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

“I think you explain it very well, Jon.”

The quiet voice from the doorway made both of them jump. Catelyn Stark stood in the doorway looking at the two of them. Jon felt his heart drop to his feet, waiting for her shout at him, throw him out, something.

“Mom!” Sansa squeaked. “We were just . . . we just . . .”

“I know what you were doing, Sansa. You wanted Jon to explain something to you that you can’t possibly understand.”

“Mom, he didn’t mean to . . .”

“Don’t speak for him, Sansa. Jon is perfectly capable of speaking for himself. I think he was doing quite well just now, but with the possible exception of Cersei Lannister, you’ve never come across an adult who clearly didn’t want you around. And she was actively vicious, and you were considerably older than six so your experience was still quite different from Jon’s. It isn’t surprising that you don’t quite understand what he’s saying.”

Jon stood frozen in place, unable to say a word. Mrs. Stark had barely looked at him since her first words—the ones she had addressed to him. She’d been looking at Sansa as she spoke to her. She still hadn’t shouted, but then Jon couldn’t recall her ever having actually shouting at him except for the time she found him helping Bran climb a tree she considered too high to be safe. Come to think of it, he’d heard her shout at all of her own children, but never at him. Except that once. No hugs. No shouting. No anything, really. He’d never actually thought about either of those things specifically before.

“Mama, don’t be mad at Jon.” Sansa said, sounding impossibly young and almost pleading. “It’s my fault, really, and I only want . . .”

“It isn’t your fault, Sansa,” Mrs. Stark said, interrupting Sansa’s plea. “It isn’t Jon’s fault, either. It’s not even entirely mine. But I am the adult here, so I do have . . .”

“I’m an adult,” Jon said suddenly, half terrified by the fact that he’d interrupted her, but half exhilarated that he’d finally said something to her that he wanted her to know, rather than just thinking it.

“You are,” Mrs. Stark said, turning toward Jon and looking at him with those eyes so unnervingly like Sansa’s. He concentrated on the crow’s feet at the corners of them to reduce the similarity. “But you weren’t when you first came to us. I was. Children are never responsible for the actions or attitudes of adults, Jon. But adults certainly bear responsibility for the attitudes and actions of the children in their lives. And you were placed in my life. Whether I wanted you there or not.”

“You didn’t,” Jon said flatly.

“Jon!” Sansa gasped, grabbing at his arm. He looked at her and felt a bit guilty at the hurt and worry on her face. She actually looked like she was about to cry. But he’d spoken the truth, and to her credit, Catelyn Stark didn’t try to deny it.

“I didn’t,” she said. “For a number of reasons that a six-year-old boy couldn’t possibly understand. But you didn’t need to understand my reasons to know I didn’t want you there, did you?”

He shook his head, finding himself off-balance and unable to speak—trapped in place by Sansa’s desperate expression and her mother’s entirely unexpected words spoken as calmly as if the woman were discussing tonight’s dinner menu with them.

“But, Mama, you said that you never . . .”

“Sansa,” Mrs. Stark said, slightly raising her voice for the first time since she’d come out to the porch, “I realize you are eighteen years old. But you still live under my roof and are subject to my rules. This conversation is between Jon and myself. I’d like you to go inside, please.”

Jon felt Sansa straighten up beside him, holding his arm even more tightly. “I’m not leaving Jon,” she said firmly, sounding eighteen rather than eight for the first time since her mother had appeared.

To Jon’s great surprise, her mother smiled. “That’s very admirable, sweetheart. I’m not asking you to leave him, though. Just to allow him a few moments to have a private conversation with me.” When Sansa didn’t respond right away, she smiled once more. “I promise not to hurt him, Sansa. But you’ve asked me to try to support this relationship between the two of you. I can’t do that without talking with Jon.”

“I know that,” Sansa said. Her voice only trembled a very little bit. “But anything you have to say to Jon, you can say to me.”

“Well, that’s up to Jon, isn’t it? I love you very much, Sansa, and your father believes that Jon loves you very much as well.” Jon noticed she didn’t say that she believed it. “Neither of us wants to hurt you, but we might have to say some things that would be hard for you to hear.”

Oh god. What was she going to say to him? But even as he thought it, Jon realized he was more concerned about Sansa hearing what he might say to her mother. If this woman wanted honesty, he’d give it to her, but Sansa loved her. She wouldn’t want to hear the words he had for Catelyn Stark. “She’s right, Sansa,” he said softly. “Go on inside.”

“But . . .”

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? For your mother and me to talk?” She looked at him uncertainly. “It’s okay, Sans. I’ll be fine.” He smiled and kissed her right on the mouth, not caring that her mother stood there watching. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she replied, and he had to suppress a grin at the way she raised her voice to be certain her mother heard it. She then squeezed his hand, and gave her mother a long look as she passed her on her way into the house.

When she had gone, Mrs. Stark gestured to the chairs. “Shall we sit down, Jon?”

He nodded and walked to the swing. When he sat down, he saw she was smiling as she sat down in a nearby chair.

“What’s funny?” he asked. His voice sounded more accusatory than he intended.

“Nothing really. It’s only that it seems all northern men become five years old when presented with a good old fashioned southern porch swing.” Before he could object to being called a child, she held up her hands in a conciliatory manner. “I’m not calling you childish, Jon. When I first brought Brandon Stark here, he never wanted to sit anywhere else. Ned was the same. Rickon complained to me that you and Sansa ‘hogged the swing’ last night, so forgive me if I smile to see you sit there now.”

Oddly enough, Jon realized that little speech just might be the warmest thing she’d ever said to him. But she had to have a purpose in coming out here to speak to him other than reminiscing about a porch swing. “What did you want to say to me, Mrs. Stark? Beyond confirming that you wish I’d never come into your life.”

“I never said that.”

“You just did! You said . . .”

“I said I didn’t want you there in my home all the time when you were a boy. However, if you make my daughter happy, I certainly won’t wish you had never come into my life.” She sighed. “This isn’t easy for me, Jon. I don’t ask you to forgive or even understand all that I’ve done or not done. But please let me tell it rather than putting words in my mouth.”

He started to retort, but then remembered how much he hated it when people assumed they knew what he wanted to say or meant to say. That was one problem with not talking as much as most people. Other people tended to start assuming what he thought. They were usually wrong.

“Okay,” he said.

“I couldn’t stand your mother,” she said bluntly, and Jon imagined that his eyes must have gone comically wide at her unexpected candor. “Hated her. I never forgave her for her affair with Brandon. I’m assuming you know that entire sordid tale?”

It took him a moment to even nod. He’d never heard Catelyn Stark ever use the word hate before and it stunned him. She might be a cold, spiteful woman, but she never lacked for manners. He’d give her that. “She didn’t like you much, either,” he said after a moment. 

In truth, he could only recall one significant conversation with his mother about Catelyn Stark. He’d been about nine years old, and he’d asked his mother why Robb’s mom didn’t like him. ‘Because she’s a bitch,’ his mom had said. She’d been using that day, but not gotten so strung out that she wasn’t coherent. ‘She’s a bitch who thinks she gets to own people but nobody owns anybody. You remember that, Jon.’ When Jon had asked her to explain better, she’d just laughed and told him not to worry about Catelyn Stark. ‘She’s only fucked two men in her whole life, and it pisses her off because they both preferred to fuck me.’ He didn’t even know what the hell that meant at the time. Hell, he’d been too little for the entire conversation. But he’d laughed about it in later years whenever he’d felt particularly hateful toward Mrs. Stark.

Looking at her now, though, nodding and looking down at her hands in acknowledgement of the fact that his mother hadn’t liked her, he didn’t feel like laughing. He also knew that while Brandon Stark might have preferred his mother to the woman he was supposed to marry, Ned didn’t. Mom had actually come on to him more than once when she was high and he was over at the house trying to help Jon with her. He never so much as let her kiss him. Maybe he’d wanted her once, but by the time Jon knew him, the only woman Ned Stark wanted was his wife. Jon actually drew in a breath as he realized that was one reason he didn’t like Mrs. Stark—a reason he’d never acknowledged before. He’d spent a lot of time as a kid wishing Ned was his father, and he’d thought if Ned only liked Mom better than Mrs. Stark, he could be.

“I don’t imagine she did,” Mrs. Stark said quietly after a few moments, her voice cutting into his thoughts. “The sad thing is that we honestly didn’t even know each other. Not really. I mean, I knew her as Ned’s girlfriend when I was engaged to Brandon. But we never really talked or anything. And then I walked in on her and Brandon and . . .”

His shock must have shown on his face because she put her hand up to her mouth. “Oh! You didn’t know that part? I’m sorry, Jon. I wouldn’t have told you that if I’d realized. It doesn’t really matter.”

He thought it probably did, though. He didn’t even want to imagine seeing Sansa like that with anyone else. “I’m sorry,” he said stupidly.

“It isn’t your fault,” she said. Then she sighed. “And it was just as much Brandon’s doing as your mother’s. More even, as far as being unfair to me was concerned. Your mother wronged Ned, of course.” She bit her lip and shifted a bit in her chair. “I hated them both at first. But I forgave Brandon more easily than I did your mother. I was done with him, of course. But I had loved him once, and so it was easier to make your mother the villain of the tale when she was no more to blame than he was. So I was unfair even to her in a way.”

Hearing her say that made Jon feel even worse about the way his mother had spoken of her. She continued speaking. “She and Brandon stayed together after the whole blow-up.” She looked at him. “Who knows? Had he lived, they might be an old married couple like Ned and me—all of us having learned to laugh at what happened in the past.” She shook her head. “Probably not. But I do believe they loved each other. His death is what caused her to leave.”

“Yeah. I know,” Jon said. “She used to talk about him all the time. Brandon, I mean. She never talked about Ne . . Mr. Stark . . . until after we moved back to her parents’ old house. And she still used to call him Brandon sometimes, especially when she was . . .” He shrugged. “You know.”

“I do know,” Catelyn said softly. “Ned told me. And I know you call my husband by his name, Jon. You needn’t refer to him as Mr. Stark for my benefit.”

He wondered if Ned had told her everything that had gone at his house. He wasn’t going to ask her. 

“Anyway, your mother coming back was quite honestly one of the worst things that ever happened to me, Jon. I don’t know who in the hell Mr. Snow was, but he must have looked uncannily like Brandon and Ned. And she would never tell anyone about him. Not even Ned.” Now, Mrs. Stark’s voice shook with the controlled anger that he’d heard from her so often in his childhood, as if she were barely holding herself back from screaming at some terrible thing. Only now, he could see quite clearly that anger wasn’t directed at him. “She enjoyed it, I think. Making people believe you were Ned’s. It was ridiculous! We were living in London—married—together! Robb was conceived and born there! To think that Ned somehow flew back to the States, hunted down a woman who’d been missing for nearly two years at that point, had an affair with her and came back to England all without my knowledge is patently ridiculous! But that didn’t stop people’s tongues.” She’d been looking down at her hands again, but now she looked up at him. “She never came right and said it, you know. Nothing we could refute. But she was downtown with you one day not even a year after she’d come back. She didn’t see me. Barbrey Dustin walked up and looked at you and said, ‘That child does look remarkably like Eddard Stark, doesn’t he?’ And she replied, ‘You think so?’ When Barbrey pressed her, she just smiled and said, ‘Well, you know what they say about apples and trees.’ Then she took you by the hand and walked off. And Barbrey looked around to see me standing there and knew I’d heard every word, and I very much wanted to kill your mother.”

Jon didn’t remember that incident, but he didn’t doubt it happened. He remembered his mother saying similar things at other times. “I never said those things,” he said. “I never did or said anything like that.” 

“I know,” she said. “But there you were in my house, close as could be to all my children, while the town gossips wagged their tongues about how Ned was at least trying to take care of his bastard child even if he was too self-righteous to claim him. And I just quietly hated your mother, resented your presence, and cursed the mysterious Mr. Snow for his brown hair and grey eyes.”

That was the second time, she’d said, ‘Mr. Snow,’ Jon realized. “That wasn’t his name.”

“What?”

“My father. Sperm donor. Whatever you want to call him. His name wasn’t Snow. Mom made that name up.”

She looked at him, puzzled. 

“When she left, she wanted to disappear. So she paid a guy for a whole new identity. New social security card and everything. He asked her what she wanted her last name to be. It was snowing that day. So she said, ‘Snow.’ That’s who she was when I was born—Anna Snow. So that’s the last name I got. When she came back, everybody knew her real name, so she started using it again, but mine was legally Jon Snow, so I kept it.”

“So you really don’t know who your father is, do you?” she said, looking at him with genuine interest.

He shrugged. “I’m as much a nameless bastard as you imagine me to be. The child of a drug addict and a ‘choose your nightmare’—rapist, murderer, drug dealer. Is that what you wanted to know, Mrs. Stark? Does that help you justify thinking I’m trash? My mom didn’t start using until after I was born so at least I wasn’t born brain damaged or in withdrawal. I remember that guy a little. The one who got her hooked on the stuff. We lived with him for awhile when I was young, but he wasn’t my father. He OD’ed, but Mom didn’t tell anybody he was dead for a long time. I didn’t understand it then. I mean I couldn’t have been more than four or five, maybe. I know now that she was still cashing his disability checks. But she started spending all the money on her habit instead of keeping any back for rent, and we got kicked out. That was about a year before we came home. She told me we were gonna live with my grandparents, but they were dead. House was ours, though. Free and clear. So we stayed.”

“I’m sorry, Jon.”

She sounded sincere. But that didn’t change the fact that she’d hated him for no reason. None of the bad stuff his mother had done—to him, to her, to Ned, to anybody—none of it was his fault. “Don’t be,” he said, and he could hear the bitterness in his voice.

“I don’t hate you, Jon,” she said then. “I never have. You may not believe me, and it’s entirely my fault if you don’t. My resentment of you was misplaced, and a little boy can’t tell the difference between hatred and resentment or the difference between someone who wants to reject an entire situation and someone who wants to reject them personally. I didn’t handle any of it very well. And I’m sorry for that.”

“And that’s supposed to make it better?” he asked her.

“No. I don’t know that anything can make it better. You are no longer that little boy who wanted something I couldn’t or wouldn’t give you. You are now a man, and I believe you are a good one. In spite of everything you suffered. No one should have suffered what you did, Jon. And I’m not really talking about my feelings about you now. You never should have been raised in that environment. But Ned refused to hear of having you taken away from your mother. He just more or less moved you in with us at least half the time, and spent a good deal of time checking on you when you were with your mom. I honestly still believe it would have been better for everyone had you been put into a real home with a good family, but I will give Ned credit for doing an admirable job of parenting you within the situation.”

“Parenting?” He nearly choked out the word. It was the last one he’d have expected her to use regarding the relationship between her husband and himself. “He never . . . he wasn’t . . .”

“You said yourself you never knew the man who fathered you. Ned isn’t related to you, Jon, but he’s the only father you’ve ever known. As much as that might have galled me at the time, given the situation, I can at least acknowledge there is no better man to have for a father. I thank God he is my children’s father, and he wouldn’t be the man I love had he not done as he did for you.”

Jon swallowed. “He asked me about it, you know. Um . . foster care. Going somewhere else to live, besides with my Mom. I never wanted to leave her, though. Not for good. She loved me. She really did. I know that’s hard for you to understand because you never had to deal with anything like she did. The addiction, I mean. It was like . . . it was like it took her away. It made her something I couldn’t understand. I don’t think she could understand it. But in there somewhere, she was still my mom. And she loved me. And I loved her. And I didn’t want to leave her. And Ned said he would never make me.”

He hadn’t been able to look at her when he said that, but when he looked up as he finished speaking, he was stunned to see she had tears in her eyes. He wasn’t certain how he felt about that. “I don’t want your pity, Mrs. Stark. I just figured if you were being honest with me today, I ought to be honest with you.”

“I don’t pity you, Jon,” she said. “I feel sad that you lost your mother in such a way, but you are not a man who needs pity. I should have had more pity for the little boy who used to sleep in Robb’s room when he was small and on the sofa in my den when the two of you got too big to fit comfortably in one twin bed. But as I said before, that little boy is gone. That chance is past.”

Something in her words sparked a memory. “That couch,” he said. “The blankets and that big pillow on it were always clean. They always smelled nice. And I know all us kids and the dogs were in that room all the time . . .”

She shrugged. “I kept two identical sets, and I washed and switched them out when they got dirty.”

“You never said anything about doing that.”

She shrugged. “You and I never talked much about anything, did we? But I wouldn’t have you freeze, and I certainly wouldn’t have you sleep in filth.”

He recalled what Sansa had said about the blueberry syrup. _Maybe the blueberry syrup was her way to make up for resenting your being around._ Catelyn Stark had been cold and distant when he’d been small and desperate for someone to love him the way his mother simply couldn’t anymore. She’d resented him for a bunch of shit that hadn’t been his fault. But maybe she wasn’t the monster he’d made her into in his mind. She’d been hurt and scared, too, he supposed. Even if she should have handled it better. Hell, he’d forgiven his mother for flat out abandoning him for the drugs. Maybe it was unfair to refuse forgiveness to a woman who had fed and sheltered him in spite of having no obligation to do so just because she didn’t love him.

“I hated you because you didn’t love me,” he said softly. He didn’t mean to say it out loud. He’d always insisted he didn’t hate the woman. He just didn’t like her much because she didn’t like him. But he had hated her. At least sometimes. And it wasn’t because she’d hated him. Maybe she had, maybe she hadn’t. She was the only one who could really know that. He’d hated her because she didn’t love him. And she loved everybody else in the world who mattered to him except for his mom.

“I didn’t love you,” she said. She didn’t offer him either censure or absolution for the hatred he’d just admitted. “I didn’t love you as a child, but my daughter now loves you as a man. And while I admit I still have reservations about the two of you, they have nothing to do with my feelings about you or your mother during all the years you were growing up, Jon. That’s the god’s honest truth, and it’s why I needed to be honest with you today. If we’re going to move forward at all, I’ll need you to hear what I say without filtering it through the hurt and resentment of a little boy who has entirely legitimate reasons not to like me at all and to consider me entirely unfair.”

Jon considered her words for several moments before replying. “Fair enough,” he said. “But I’ll need you to hear everything I say without filtering it through your feelings about my mother. I am not her. She’s been dead three years. And as you said yourself, I’m not responsible for anything she ever did.

Catelyn Stark smiled at him—a warm, genuine smile—a smile so like one that Sansa might give him that it made him catch his breath. “Fair enough,” she said, repeating his words. Then the corner of her mouth twitched just a bit as she stood and held out her hand. “Shall we shake on it? Please forgive me if I don’t want either of us to spit in our palms first.”

Jon laughed out loud as he stood as well and reached out to grasp her offered hand. He’d forgotten about the summer he and Robb had to “spit-swear” on everything, but he now recalled it earning them repeated lectures on hygiene from Mrs. Stark. She joined in his laughter at the shared memory as they shook hands, and it occurred to Jon that while the little boy somewhere deep inside him might still, on his worst days, hate the woman who couldn’t love him when he wanted her to so badly, he thought it just possible he might actually learn to like Catelyn Stark.

**CATELYN**

As she stood on the porch, shaking hands with Jon Snow, Catelyn felt like she’d run a marathon or taken an impossibly difficult exam and somehow survived it. He’d been brutally honest with her, but that had been what she had asked for. She’d been honest with him as well, and he had at least seemed to listen.

She’d felt as if he’d slapped her when he’d admitted he hated her. He’d used the past tense, and she desperately hoped that meant it was a feeling he could put behind him. _I hated you because you didn’t love me._ Jesus, what a cold-hearted selfish bitch she’d been, unable to see past her own hurts to reach out to a child in pain. Ned had to have known just how dreadful the boy’s life was whenever he wasn’t with them, and yet he’d never faulted her for not trying harder to give him the kind of love and support that Ashara so obviously couldn’t. Perhaps, he should have. But she knew herself well enough to know she wouldn’t have responded well to that at all in the early days of Jon’s coming to be with them. And later . . . well, Jon had resented her as much as she resented him, and likely Ned thought they had passed the point of no return. Maybe they had. Maybe nothing short of Sansa falling in love with him could have compelled Catelyn to take this step, and nothing short of falling in love with Sansa could have compelled Jon to return it.

Catelyn realized the two of them still stood there holding hands on her father’s front porch, likely looking like a couple of idiots. She pulled her hand back. “Thank you, Jon,” she said, “For your honesty.”

“Thank you for yours, as well, Mrs. Stark.” He gave her a kind of half smile. “Although that feels kind of like thanking the doctor for a shot. You know it’s going to make you feel better, but it still doesn’t feel good.”

“I agree whole-heartedly,” she said with a small laugh. “But Jon, if you would sit down again, we really do have to talk about you and Sansa.”

She saw the way he closed off his face at once, as if to protect himself from her words. “I am not opposed to the two of you dating,” she said quickly. “Not entirely. But I think it only fair that you know precisely how I feel.”

“Okay,” he said warily, and he sat back down on the swing, immediately moving it back and forth just slightly with his feet on the ground. She suppressed a smile. She didn’t think he even realized he’d been doing that the entire time they’d been speaking. 

“You know what Joffrey Baratheon put my daughter through,” she said without preamble.

“He’s a fucking dick,” Jon said promptly. “I know you don’t like swearing, but Joffrey Baratheon is a living, breathing obscenity. No other words work for him.”

She raised a brow. “I happen to agree with you entirely,” she said. “But whatever Sansa says, she isn’t over it.”

“She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Joffrey,” Jon said, leaning forward.

“I don’t mean she isn’t over him,” Catelyn clarified. “She isn’t over what he did to her. Being hit by someone who is supposed to love you is a betrayal almost beyond comprehension. And a . . . devaluation of your basic personhood. Do you understand what I mean, Jon?”

“He did as big a number on her head as he did on her body. Yeah. I know that, Mrs. Stark. She gets scared of things easier than she did before she was with him. She doesn’t like shouting at all, and if we’re around a lot of men who even sound angry—like guys yelling at sports on TV or something, she gets anxious.”

Catelyn was pleased that he’d noticed all these things, but that was only part of it. “That’s all very true, but there’s more to it. She won’t trust easily again for a very long time.” She held up her hand to stop the protest he started to make. “Oh, she thinks she trusts you, and she does . . . to a point. But Jon, the two of you will have disagreements, and if you raise your voice she’ll not react well. If you leave the room, she might believe you’re leaving her for good. And if you question her about anything—entirely innocently, she’ll likely get very angry and accuse you of not trusting her. Joffrey played a lot of mind games with her. Emotional abuse doesn’t leave bruises you can see, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Sansa stopped going to therapy about the time the two of you started dating. We didn’t know you were dating at the time because you kept it hidden from us. But she told us she was 100% better and the counseling was pointless. Flat out refused to go.”

“And you think that’s because she and I were together?” he asked.

“I do,” she said. “She feels safe with you. She feels whole. Why spend time trying to work through some of the worst experiences of your life when you can feel so much better just being close to the man you love?”

“But if she’s happy . . .”

“You do make her happy, Jon. But happy is not well. She can’t be well as long as her feelings of happiness and safety are completely rooted in an outside source—you. Had you come to us when you first started dating, we could have talked to her about that, and knowing the cause for her sudden ‘recovery,’ we’d have been far more insistent on her continuing her therapy.”

“She didn’t want to tell anybody. She . . .”

“She was seventeen years old and afraid Mommy and Daddy would say no. You were an adult.”

“Yeah,” Jon said slowly. “Ned kind of told me the same thing. It’s not an excuse or anything, but she was really scared that you’d keep us apart. And she said she wouldn’t be able to handle being at school or anything else without knowing that she had me, and I just . . . fuck. That’s exactly what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Catelyn saw true realization dawning in his eyes, and she decided she didn’t mind his use of the obscenity terribly much. “You’re her hero, Jon. You and Robb saved her from Joffrey so in her mind, you can save her from anything.”

“I never tried to be a hero. I just love her. I want to be with her.”

“I know that,” Catelyn said softly. “I believe that you love her, Jon, I do.” She saw disbelief in his eyes so she continued. “I wasn’t as certain as Ned was, I admit. But you see, I can’t imagine admitting to you some of the things I’ve told you today were it not for how much I love Sansa, and I’d wager that your willingness to be so honest with me comes from that same place.” She smiled at him. “It seems the two of us have something in common, after all. Something very important.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We do.”

She liked the certainty in his voice. “Now, you can’t remain her hero, I’m afraid. You’re only human, Jon. I honestly believe that my husband is the finest man on this earth, and yet he disappoints me at times. And I disappoint him. You will disappoint Sansa, and it will likely crush her—at least initially. You have to be prepared to weather that if you truly love her. She is young. You are not only two and a half years older, but life made you grow up in many ways at far too young an age. Sansa still has quite a bit more growing up to do, Jon, although she’d dispute me on that. And she still needs to work on her recovery from Joffrey’s abuse.” She paused as she could see Jon considering her words. “You have put yourself in a relationship with someone both young and damaged. That isn’t a simple proposition, Jon. Are you certain you want all that entails?”

“I want Sansa. I love her, and that isn’t going to change. Whatever we have to go through.”

“And what if she decides she doesn’t want you?”

Catelyn watched his face fall as he even contemplated the prospect. He really does love her, she realized. She further realized that she honestly hoped that Sansa wouldn’t break his heart almost as much she hoped he wouldn’t break hers, and she felt guilty about lashing out earlier at Ned for feeling that same way.

“Then I’ll go,” he said finally. “I’m not a stalker. And I don’t force myself on people who don’t want me. I know that’s not a good place to be.” He looked at her meaningfully, and she took his point well enough. “But she does love me, Mrs. Stark. However young she is.”

“She does love you,” Catelyn agreed and watched Jon’s eyes widen once more. His perpetual shock at her words would be quite funny if the topic of their conversation weren’t so serious. “If I didn’t realize that before, I’d have been blind not to see it when she stood here on the porch determined to protect you from me!” 

Jon didn’t smile at that remark until she after she smiled herself, but she knew he’d been pleased by Sansa standing at his side to face her. She’d seen it as clearly as she’d seen Sansa’s love for him. 

“She’s brave,” he said. “No matter how scared she gets or what she’s been through. She’s braver than people think she is.”

“She is,” Catelyn agreed. “But you’re going to have to let her find her own way, Jon. Even let her stumble sometimes. She has to recover, she has to keep growing up, and you’re going to have to be patient with her. You can’t rush her in this relationship. You can’t push her to be where you are. That doesn’t work.” She noticed the panicked look on his face when she’d mentioned not rushing her in the relationship and sighed. “I’m not talking about sex, Jon.”

His expression then was entirely comical, regardless of how serious their conversation was. “Unlike Ned,” Catelyn continued, “I am fully aware that my daughter is not a virgin.”

He sputtered something that was almost English, but not quite, and Catelyn hurried on before the poor boy had a heart attack. “I’m her mother, Jon, and while she didn’t tell me anything about her relationship with Joffrey while it was going on, she’s told me a great deal since it ended. And she told me she’s confided in you as well. Needless to say, this isn’t information she’s shared with her father, and I don’t think he really needs to hear it.” Jon remained silent, but his expression positively screamed agreement with that sentiment. “As to the state of your physical relationship with my daughter, she hasn’t told me a thing, and I’m not asking you to tell me either. I only ask that you not only behave completely responsibly when it comes to sex, but respect both her relative youth and what she’s been through.” She swallowed. “Please don’t hurt her, Jon.”

“I have no intention of hurting her. Ever.” Having recovered his voice, he spoke those words with conviction, and she nodded in acknowledgement of them.

“Is there anything you’d like to say to me?” she asked. “I’ve been doing most of the talking for awhile.” 

He hesitated and then asked, “Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m going to become a drug addict? Or what a bastard with no name has to offer a girl like Sansa?”

“No,” she said. “I’ll admit I’ve asked myself those questions, Jon. I’ll likely worry about them again whether I should or not. But they aren’t very fair questions, are they? So I won’t ask them to you.”

He nodded. She could see was still uncomfortable with her. But then she was still uncomfortable with him. She did feel they had come miles further in this single afternoon than they’d come in all the previous years. She hoped he felt the same.

“Hey, you two! Supper’s nearly ready.”

She turned to see Ned in the doorway holding two glasses of lemonade. “Are those for us?” she asked, smiling at him.

“If you want them,” he said, stepping out on the porch. “Sansa just made it. Said she thought you two might be getting thirsty out here.”

“Oh, really? She sent you out here because she thought we might be thirsty?” Catelyn asked, accepting the glass from his hand.

“Well, that and to check young Jon here for injuries.”

Catelyn snorted. “Tell our daughter her faith in me is touching.”

Jon laughed as he took his lemonade from Ned as well. “I’ll go in and tell her we had a lovely chat, and that she should trust her mother better than that.” He turned toward Catelyn. “Unless there’s anything else, Mrs.Stark?”

“No, I think we can adjourn for dinner, Jon. Oh! One thing. You can call me Catelyn if you like. You don’t have to, of course. But if you want to . . .” She shrugged. “Jeyne does.”

He grinned at her and then lifted his glass to Ned. “Thanks for the lemonade.”

Ned moved to put an arm around her and had started to say something when Jon called back from the doorway. “Catelyn?”

She turned to face him, the unfamiliar sound of her given name in his voice sounding odd to her ears.

“I do have one more question.”

“Yes?”

“Why did you get the blueberry syrup?”

“Because you always liked it so much. And you ate breakfast at our house at least once or twice a week—nearly every day in the summer.”

He nodded. “But why did you get it in the first place—the very first bottle, I mean? None of your kids like it.”

“Oh!” She laughed. “I picked it up by mistake. It was mixed in with the maple syrup, and I didn’t notice. I put it out on the table just hoping somebody might eat it, and while Robb, Sansa, and even Arya turned their noses up at it, you acted as if you’d never tasted anything so wonderful.” She gave a small shrug. “So I kept buying it.”

Jon nodded again, appearing deep in thought. He started to speak, then stopped, and then turned to take a couple steps back toward her and Ned. “Do you know why?” he asked, seeming to have decided to speak after all. “Why I like it so much, I mean?”

“Why?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“When I was really tiny, too little to remember anything clearly, my mom used to make us waffles a lot. That was before the drugs, when it was just the two of us, and we were really . . . okay. She always used blueberry syrup. I didn’t remember that. Not until I tasted it at your house. Hell, I was so little when Mom actually made waffles, I probably didn’t even know the word blueberry, but that’s what it was, even if I didn’t call it that. And I remembered it, while I was eating it there in your kitchen, sitting between Robb and Sansa, listening to them call it yucky and watching Arya throw waffle bites down from her high chair at the dogs. I remembered it, and it tasted like magic.” He smiled at her. “Thanks for that. Even if it was an accident that first time, you didn’t have to keep buying it. That blueberry syrup was the most magical thing in your house.” He smiled even more widely. “Except for Sansa.” He lifted his glass once more to the two of them and disappeared into the house without another word.

“Are you all right?” she heard Ned ask, and she turned to look up at him.

“Of course,” she said, blinking at the moisture in her eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re crying,” he said softly, and he brushed his lips softly over both of her eyes. “Was it a difficult conversation, my love?”

She nodded. “But I think we’re all right,” she said. “At least more all right than we’ve ever been. What are you staring at, Eddard Stark?” He hadn’t taken his eyes from her face, and he was grinning at her like a madman.

“The most magical thing in my life.”

She laughed at him. “You’re delusional. But I love you. And I honestly believe we’re all going to be more all right than we’ve been in quite a while.”

He kissed her lips then, and she closed her eyes, allowing her mind to be filled up by the warm strength of her husband’s arms and the sweet taste of his lips, by the sight of the fierce love blazing in her daughter’s eyes as she stood beside Jon Snow, by the sound of the conviction in Jon’s voice as he proclaimed his love for Sansa, and by a long-forgotten memory of the wonder in a little boy’s voice as he whispered, ‘Mommy’s magic potion’ while drowning a waffle in blueberry syrup.


End file.
